Salman Rushdie
Writer’s block and nightmares since the knife attack
Salman Rushdie before the attack.
© lev radin/Shutterstock
For the first time since last summer’s stabbing, Salman Rushdie opens up about nightmares and writer’s block.
Six months after the attempt on his life, Salman Rushdie (75) is still suffering physically and mentally from the consequences. “I sit down to write and nothing happens,” Rushdie explains to the Magazine “The New Yorker”. It is his first interview after the assassination on August 12, 2022.
At a lecture in upstate New York, a 24-year-old attacked the writer with a knife. The son of Lebanese immigrants seriously injured Rushdie in his neck, arm, face and liver. Since then, the British-Indian author has been blind in one eye and unable to move one hand.
“Not out of the woods yet”
“I write, but it’s a combination of emptiness and junk, things I write and delete the next day,” Rushdie continues in the interview. “I’m not out of this forest yet, really.”
In addition to writer’s block, Salman Rushdie suffers from nightmares. He does not dream directly about the knife attack, but still “scary” things. He’s doing better physically. He can get up and walk. Only typing is difficult for him because he has no feeling in some fingers.
Rushdie has been in danger for over 30 years
In 1989, the then Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-1989) issued a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. An Iranian foundation set a $1 million bounty on his head, which other institutions later increased to $4 million. The reason: Rushdie, who comes from a Muslim Indian family, insulted Islam, the Koran and the Prophet Mohammed with his novel “The Satanic Verses”.
Since 1989, Rushdie has lived in various secret locations, under police protection. Several translators of the “Satanic Verses” were assassinated. Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was stabbed to death in 1991.
In the last few years before the momentous knife attack, Rushdie had rarely resorted to bodyguards. He does not blame the organizers of the reading in August 2022, who did not use metal detectors. “I’ve tried to avoid accusation and resentment over the past few years,” he told The New Yorker. “I try to look forward and not back. What happens tomorrow is more important than what happened yesterday”.
Rushdie’s new book, Victory City, is due out in English on Tuesday. The publication of the German translation is planned for April.